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"This isn’t your typical book about flexible working and letting employees work from home. It gives actionable guidelines to make a shift in management philosophy possible"

London, UK – 25th March 2014 – Guy Clapperton, journalist and author, and Philip Vanhoutte, senior vice president and managing director of Plantronics, Europe & Africa, have announced The Smarter Working Manifesto.This new book provides practical real-life examples and presents convincing arguments for why businesses should allow employees to decide the best place and time to work for them.

Philip and Guy draw on their own international experience to create the definitive guide on how to build the best workplace, both on and off premise, for the 21st century. Today’s workforce is more driven than ever to be in charge of his or her own workplace, timetable and overall work experience. The Smarter Working Manifesto presents practices for making more money out of a happier workforce and how to do it.

“Companies can no longer ignore the change in work style. Long gone are the 9-to-5 workdays sitting inside a traditional office environment,” said Clapperton “Today’s worker can use many specific techniques and technologies to help them work smarter no matter their location. The Smarter Working Manifesto helps both employer and employee embark on that journey.”

The Smarter Working Manifesto tears down the walls and discusses the evolution of flexible work and how it can be implemented successfully. Companies are slowly justifying the change and achieving buy-in, resulting in recent research from IDC[1] stating that 34 per cent of the world’s working population will be mobile by 2015.

“This isn’t your typical book about flexible working and letting employees work from home. It gives actionable guidelines to make a shift in management philosophy possible,” said Vanhoutte. “From my first hand experience, building a smarter working environment for a multi-national corporation is not easy. But, overwhelming positive change is possible. I wish I had a book of this sort when we started.”

Guy Clapperton became a journalist in the technology press in 1989, going freelance in 1993. He started using early forms of social media almost immediately as his working network. He contributed to many of the national press – still does – and started writing books in the early part of the 21st century. At around the same time he added media training to his offerings and in this way is a coach to several clients per month. In 2009 his first book on social media came out and almost immediately he was in demand as a speaker on the subject. His second came out in 2012 and he continues to speak and moderate panels on the topic. He has moderated panels for Bafta and is a regular commentator on the BBC News Channel and elsewhere.

With a 35-year whirlwind career in the information and communications technology industry, Philip Vanhoutte lives and breathes flexible working. Groomed at Accenture and Wang Labs as an energetic office automation consultant in the 80’s and surfing the waves of the laptop revolution at Dell in the 90’s, he has never used a professional desktop computer, forging the way for work via laptop on the road, and anywhere else his profession takes him. In the early 2000’s, as the Global Marketing Vice President at Sony-Ericsson, he launched the first smartphone with Bluetooth headset and reaps both the benefits and cruxes of a constant connection via mobile phone. As the current Senior VP and Managing Director of Europe & Africa for headset manufacturer Plantronics, his love for personal technology and wearables has matured into a passion for smarter working – one that has manifested across the entire corporation.